


Return

by momentarygrace



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:20:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentarygrace/pseuds/momentarygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in 1981. The Doctor reaches the end of his twelfth regeneration and returns to Earth to die. A young woman finds him and becomes involved. An old enemy comes to gloat?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return

When I found the old man on the beach he was dying. didn't really know that until later, but I think I sensed it. He had that sort of fragile look about him that my grandfather had right before he died. 

I got him off the beach and home to my cottage as quickly as I could manage. He must have been at least six feet tall when he stood up, and I am not exactly a powerhouse, but we managed somehow. He became conscious, in a manner of speaking, and that helped. He kept going on about a 'key' and about how he'd lost it and had to get it back. I looked about on the beach but there was nothing there. 

When I finally got him to the cottage I put him in my bed straight away. I only have one bed, and I didn't mind spending a few nights on the couch. I had to get him covered up: he was so cold. His clothes were damp so I undressed him and wrapped him in all the quilts and blankets I could find. 

I couldn't find any identification in his clothes. His pockets were full of all sorts of strange things, but nothing to show who he was or where he might have come from. No key either. I hung everything up in the corner with the gas heater. 

The nearest phone was six miles down the road, and I wasn't about to walk it in the dark, which it was by now, nor leave him alone. I usually took a bus into the city when I had to go. I decided to think about that tomorrow. 

It was a little while before he settled down to sleep. he tried twice to get up but he was so weak that it wasn't difficult to keep him in bed. I talked to him, to soothe him, and he looked at me but I think he hardly saw me. He called me Barbara and Jo, and Vicky, and half a dozen other names. 

Once he entreated me very touchingly to 'look after the key'. I kept wishing I could find that key and put his mind to rest. 

He seemed to quiet for a while, and then he began to speak again. At first I thought it was gibberish, then became convinced that it was a foreign language. But language? It didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard. had a very sibilant, liquid sound, and his voice took a low throbbing note, like a singer's, for a moment. He had a beautiful voice, I'd noticed that right away. Perhaps he was some down and out actor: it's a chancy life as I have good reason to know. 

Finally, he slept. I tried to feel a pulse, but I'm not good at that sort of thing. He was breathing, albeit very slowly and shallowly. He still seemed very cold to the touch. I got up and put the kettle on, feeling the need for something hot to drink myself. I put on my nightgown and a robe, got a book and propped myself up in the old overstuffed armchair by the bed. 

It was no good. I couldn't read, so I just sat there watching him sleep and gave myself over to rampant speculation. He didn't really look old. His face was lined a little - with care, but not greatly with age, and his hair had more brown than gray in it. But somehow he gave off the feeling of great age, a feeling so tangible I had accepted it without question on first seeing him. Even now, staring at his face I couldn't shake it off. But it was almost like the feeling one gets standing by a Roman ruin, or a mountain that has stood for ages before your birth and will stand for ages after you are gone. Like the feeling I used to get staring at the moon, or out into the night sky at the stars. 

I must have dozed for a minute, for the noisy kettle woke me up, and my book had fallen on the floor. I got up, yawned, and went into the kitchen to make some tea. I left it to brew and brushed my teeth, passing the bedroom door on the way back to the kitchen, and saw him sitting up. 

"Earth, twentieth century..." he was saying softly to himself. "So I did make it back after all." What an odd thing to say. 

I stopped in the doorway and he looked up. "Hullo," I said. He smiled. 

"How do you do, my dear. I'm sorry, but should I know you?" he said. 

I shook my head. "I found you on the beach. I didn't know what to do with you so I brought you home. You're very lucky, you know, I'm the only one that ever walks that stretch of beach, and I don't do it that often." Only when I'm depressed, I thought, but didn't add. 

"Yes, I suppose I am lucky. Always have had a peculiar sort of luck." he said, half to me and half to himself. I came in and sat down. 

"We're miles from civilization here, but if there's someone you'd like me to call, I can hike up to the bus station tomorrow," I offered. 

He smiled again, a patient smile. "No, there's no one you need to call for me. If I could just rest here for a while..." 

I frowned. "Of course you can, as long as you like, but I think you need some help..." 

He held up his hand and I stopped. "All I really need," he said, looking into my eyes, "Is a bit of peace." 

I seemed to look into his eyes for a long time. It was like staring into a well of calm and patience, but I could feel the power of his personality, so unlike anyone I'd ever known before. I thought I knew what he was asking. I didn't like it, but I understood. 

"Airtight," I said, a trifle gruffly. He closed his eyes for a moment. 

"If only I hadn't lost the key," he said softly. 

Key again? "Urn, would you like some tea?" I said, rather abruptly. This old man was unsettling me. He opened his eyes. 

"Yes, my dear, I would very much like some tea," he smiled. 

"Coming up," I muttered getting up. I thought I heard a soft chuckle behind me. 

 

I returned with the tray and set it on the table by the bed. I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep again, but his nose twitched as the steam from the tea reached it, and he sat up. He sipped reverently and I could see him relaxing. 

"Ah, yes... never found a decent substitute for this either," he muttered. I drank my tea and stared at the floor. 

"Not sulking, I hope," he said. I looked up. He had finished his tea and was regarding me with interest. 

I stared straight back. "You don't want me to help you." I stated. 

"There's nothing you can do to help me, except what you've already been doing," he said reasonably. "I'm dying." 

I sat up abruptly. "That's a bit fatalistic, isn't it?" I said. 

He laughed. "Perhaps it is, but then, death is fatal, you know," he said matter-of-factly. 

"I don't find that very funny," I snapped. 

"No," he said gently. "Yours is a short lived race. Death is painful to you; I've seen that. I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked to stay, but there's no where else for me to go." 

"Don't be ridiculous. But I still think a hospital..." I began uncertainly. 

"Your hospitals couldn't do anything. I've reached the end of my twelfth life. It's not the body this time, it's the mind that's going." He seemed to go off into reverie, then he stopped and looked at me with great compassion. As if I were the one that needed it. I couldn't stand it. 

"Um, that key of yours," I began. He gave me such a piercing look I faltered. "Well, you kept going on and on about this lost key, and I thought, well, that I might look on the beach for it, if you think it might be there," I said. I felt totally inadequate. His look softened. 

"I would appreciate that," he said. "It's silly of me, I suppose, but I feel quite lost without it. I've locked myself out of the TARDIS and I can't get back in." 

I wasn't following all of this. "Not that I'm in any shape to be going anywhere. Still I had thought to send it back to the Time Lords at last." He seemed to be talking to himself now. 

"Do you have a name?" I said with a sort of quiet desperation. He looked up at once. "I'm the Doctor," he said automatically. Then he gave me a faint smile. "A rather tired Doctor, it seems," he said. 

I picked up the tray and took it to the kitchen, turning out the bedroom light as I went. When I came back his eyes were closed, but he was restless, muttering something about spiders and crystals. His cheek and hands were still cool to my touch. It worried me. I had to get him warm somehow. Suddenly this old man had become very important to me. 

Finally I lifted the covers and got into bed beside him. I put my arms around him, and he muttered something softly I didn't catch, and settled on my shoulder like a contented child. 

 

* * * 

The Doctor woke to a feeling of warmth and softness all around him. It was an unusual sensation for him. It was dark but his vision was clear and he could see where he was with no trouble. He found himself lying in a bed in the arms of a young woman. Ah yes, the one who had found him on the beach, and had been kind to him, in an abrupt sort of way. He disturbed her, he knew. Well, that was healthy enough. 

He let the feeling of warmth and peace wash over him. It was a luxury he had never allowed himself before, but now, why not? This was how he wanted it, a release from his burdens...  
Something about that thought annoyed him, for some reason. 

No, surely this was better. He thought of the Master, at the end of his twelfth life, holding onto a rotting body with a corrupted mind...not that way. But the Master had cheated mortality in the end, cheated death itself. All very well for him, but not for me, the Doctor thought. Time I stopped bumbling around the cosmos, interfering... 

But that thought too, made him restless. He looked down at the girl holding him so tenderly. In sleep, a slight crease of worry knitted her brows. Sarah? No, his mind was wandering again. This girl looked nothing like Sarah Jane. He tried to recall her name and realized he didn't know it. She'd never told him, or he'd never asked. 

She was not beautiful, as humans judged beauty. But talking to her, he had noticed some of the qualities his race valued. She was intelligent, and had an empathy akin to his own. Sad, in a way. Such empathy was highly regarded in advanced, peaceful cultures, but it probably made her life difficult here. He brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and as his hand touched her forehead her sleeping thoughts rose briefly into his mind. 

...like something slipping away I never had a chance to grasp. . . like I've_been waiting all my life to meet someone and now it's too late... 

Startled, he broke the mental contact. It happened too quietly, too easily. Still, I am a Time Lord, he thought. My mental barriers must be slipping. Not surprising really, and I don't suppose I shall have time to get used to it. 

The Doctor turned his mind to wander amongst his memories, touching briefly on an event, a face, a planet, if it kept him from eavesdropping on the dreams of a sleeping Earth girl. 

Something disturbed his reverie, drawing him irresistibly back to awareness here and now. The warmth that had greeted him pleasantly on his awakening was increasing. Not unpleasantly so, but he realized, startled, that the increase was coming from his own body. 

Movement caught his attention, and he became aware that he was caressing the young woman beside him, with long gentle strokes. She moved a little in her sleep, and seemed suddenly to him, as humans often did, very fragile and vulnerable. He tried to stop the movement of his hand and could not. 

Bewildered, he struggled to control himself, only to realize that the heat of his body was still increasing, slowly but certainly, degree by degree. Suddenly his mind supplied the answer. 

'The procreative urge becomes the strongest when full realization of mortality occurs,' he recalled the lecture by the haughty Time Lord psychologist. Experience had taught him the same was true of all races: nearness of death awakened the sexual drive. It was a strong, instinctual re-affirmation of life. 

Time Lord sexuality was different from that of other races. Due to their incredibly long life spans, reproduction was carefully controlled. If the Gallifreyans reproduced with the rapidity of, say, homo sapiens, the universe would be thronging with them in a few generations. Amongst the lower classes on Gallifrey birth control was achieved by chemical means, and supervised by the Time Lords. The Time Lords themselves had no need of chemical contraceptives, for each Time Lord, through both training and instinctual self awareness, had full control over whether his sexual release was active and viable. Time Ladies exercised similar control over their own fertility. Only by the choice and with the consent of both could a child be conceived. 

The intimacy of sex provided for other needs: the release of tension being one. But the control the Time Lords exercised over themselves made such release only infrequently needed. The Doctor had allowed it to be awakened in him rarely. 

Struggling for the last vestige of control, the Doctor realized that the young woman's eyes were open and she was watching him. 

 

* * * 

It was a rare wakening. His touch was gentle, but eventually roused me from sleep. The slow caresses had a calming effect on me, otherwise I might have started. His eyes were half closed, but his face held and intense look. Perspiration was beaded on his lip. At first I thought with fear of a sudden fever, but the slow movement of his hand brought me to realize it was not that at all. 

As soon as he saw me watching him, his face changed. His eyes seemed almost to hold a note of pain, or pleading. I felt myself respond to it without thinking. 

"It is the nearness of...realization of the end..." he managed to say. His voice was quiet, but with a harsh edge of control. I did not really understand his words, but his need was clear enough. I touched his shoulder. Apart from the caressing hand, his body was rigid with tension. Despite my unfamiliarity with such moments, my usual clumsiness a times of intimacy, what I did came easily to me. 

My hand touched his face, neck, and moved down his body. I felt the tension drain out of him like water and wanted to laugh. The strength of his embrace surprised me. Suddenly I forgot that he was an old man, near to death, and I a lonely misanthrope, hiding from the world. My robe was an encumbrance. His hands freed me from it as if by magic. He was still naked as I had put him into that bed, never dreaming... 

He knew the language of touch ever so much better than I. I simply tried to memorize him with my hands. He didn't kiss me, though, so I decided to take the initiative there. All my former clumsiness had dropped from me, and I let my lips and tongue speak to him without words. He seemed surprised, then interested, and finally returned my kiss to me like a slowly building tidal wave that left me gasping and trembling. Then I felt something in my mind, like the fragilest of barriers dissolving, and the most incredible things began to happen. 

I felt his thoughts touching me almost before his hands did. His mind acted upon my mind and body until I felt myself yielding to him absolutely, heart and soul, the way I never thought I could yield. Then I felt something old and fierce rise in me and as my hands explored him I felt myself demanding an equal return. 

He was startled, as if he had expected no such response from my mind, and then I felt a great exulting joy from him. His hands made me gasp, and I felt myself flowing like water. His body was warm and smooth like sculptor's clay beneath mine. 

We must have made love for hours, building ever so slowly to a climax that rocked my world to its foundations. As he moved in me and I with him, I lost all knowledge of my identity and his lives flowed through my mind. Who and what he was I realized I would never fully know. Native to this Earth, he was not. Nor within the bounds of my comprehension. It did not matter. Comprehension has never been a prerequisite for love. Our minds were so joined that I knew with his own sure knowledge that we had conceived a child. 

 

Ah, the morning, with its harsher realities. He was cold in my arms when I woke. Incredible fear shot through me until I realized he was breathing. Some part of my mind supplied the thought that perhaps the cooler body temperature was natural for him, like the double heartbeat, and with that it all came flooding back to me. 

I tried to slide out of bed without disturbing him, but he half woke and held my arm. 

"Tilly," he said softly, focusing on my face with half closed eyes. "Tilly, you mustn’t tell anyone, d'you understand?" I bit my lip in frustration, and promised and talked, until he quieted. Who was Tilly? I would probably never know. If she wasn't simply the product of a fragmenting mind... 

I got dressed, and left a tray with tea and biscuits by the bed. Then I locked the house and took my doubts down to the beach for a long walk. 

 

It was a grey, windy day. I passed the spot on the beach where I'd found him without noticing, I was so deep in thought. I had narrowed it down to two problems facing me: what to do, and what to believe, and I wasn't getting any further. 

There was really nothing I could do, and as for believing, that would have been a whole lot simpler if I even trusted my own mind. 

Something caught my eye as I walked with my eyes on the ground. I bend down curiously and picked up a silver chain with an unusual fob hanging from it. I looked around, not really knowing what for. The wind hadn't completely obliterated marks in the sand, perhaps of someone's passing, I couldn't tell. Then I saw the big blue box. 

It was about thirty yards from where I was standing, on an open stretch of beach I'd walked not a month before. I stared hard at it, and then looked at the silver thing in my hand, and began to run. 

 

* * * 

The Doctor sat up in the bed and stared at the opposite wall, a cup of tea cooling at his elbow. Finally he sighed, and picked up the now lukewarm cup of tea and began to drink. He wished the girl hadn't gone, leaving him alone. He wanted to talk to her, find out more about her. But perhaps it didn't matter. 

"Of course it matters," he said to himself. "Doctor, what's wrong with you?" 

The answer came a little too quickly as the teacup slid out of his shaking fingers and crashed to the floor. His hands clenched to fists. That really was silly of me, thinking I heard the TARDIS materializing, he thought. I would have sent it back to the Time Lords, but I guess if they want it they'll just have to come and get it. 

The barriers of his mind slipped again and he found himself standing at his own trial, answering the accusations of the Time Lords. He stared into space, reliving the event, and did not see the darkly handsome man who stepped incongruously out of a grandfather clock in the corner and walked towards the bed. 

The dark man stared down at the Doctor, whose eyes were unfocused, unaware. He reached out a hand to the Doctor's face in what seemed almost a caress. 

"Here you are, my old enemy," the man said. "Helpless, for once." He gently touched the Doctor's hair. "I've tried to kill you a thousand times; ached for your death in every bone of my bodies. And now that it is inevitable at last, Doctor, I find I really can not let you die." 

 

* * * 

I paused for a moment before I unlocked the door of my beach house. This is it, I thought. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the key I found, or gone into the blue box, the TARDIS he called it. But it had one definite effect: I now no longer doubted my sanity or his. It occurred to me that entering the TARDIS, larger on the inside than it appeared to be, probably tended to cause the opposite effect: the doubting of one's sanity. I smothered a laugh and struggled with the cranky key in the lock. 

I was drawing breath to yell, 'I found it!' when I heard voices coming from the bedroom. That stopped me cold - my lock is a very old fashioned one. Without the key it can't be opened from the inside or out. 

The bedroom door was half closed so I could get quite close (I hoped) without being detected. 

 

"...that you're quite mad," the Doctor's voice was weak, but clear. 

"Really, Doctor, you're in a rather shaky position to be questioning y mental veracity," a second voice spoke. Something about this voice made the hair on the back of my neck rise. "At any rate," the voice continued, "This time, you have nothing to say about it. I thought it might interest you to know, however, that you'd been robbed in the name of justice. The Time Lords," the voice dripped with hatred, "robbed you of life, Doctor. When they forced your regeneration, let me see, the third time, did you ever question their right?" 

"It wasn't the Time Lords who ended my fourth life, as I recall," the Doctor's voice held a note of suppressed anger. 

"Tut, tut, we're not going to stoop to that, are we? I'm here to help you." 

"Even if you weren't raving, I don't need your help, and certainly don't want it!" I heard an expulsion of air, as if this outburst had exhausted the Doctor's little strength. I nearly ran in the room right then but something held me in my place. Fear of that other voice, perhaps? 

There was a moment of silence, and then the other spoke. 

"Do not tax yourself, Doctor, you have little time." could I have imagined a note of concern? "I came for one reason only. I have the power... to give you life again. With this, I can restore to you all the years that should have been yours, but were taken away. How much time, even I do not know, but it is more than one full lifetime, that I have been able to determine, it may even set up a new cycle of twelve." 

"If you came here to taunt me with that, you've wasted a trip. My life has been full, and I accept the end." I felt a lump rise in my throat at the strange pride in the Doctor's voice. 

"Brave words, Doctor, as always," the other sneered. "Very well, Doctor, if you need a reason: remember this, when you are gone there will be no one to interfere with my plans. The universe will be at my mercy." 

"In that case," shot back the Doctor, "why are you so anxious to do me this little favor?" 

There was a silence. Then, so low I had to strain to catch it, "We are bound together, Doctor, you and I. Irrevocably bound... you cannot pass on while I yet live..." 

"Don't touch me," the Doctor spat. I tensed to move, but something held me, kept holding me... 

The vibration began very low and built until it shook the walls. 

Light began leaking through the half open door, growing in intensity until I was blinded. 

It stopped abruptly. A moments silence, and then I heard a strange wheezing, groaning sound that faded. 

I ran into the bedroom. The Doctor was lying on the bed, and there was no one else in there. I placed my hands on his both sides on his chest, but felt nothing: no pulse, no movement of breathing. I stared down at him, unbelieving. Before the tears had even formed in my eyes his face began to shift. I wiped my hand across my eyes, but I wasn't crying. He started to glow and blur and his features began to change. In moments I was staring down at a younger, completely different man. 

 

Several hours later, I sat in the kitchen watching him eat the spaghetti I had fixed hurriedly, with a voracious appetite. He was dressed, showered, and showed such energy I was unnerved. I had said hardly two words to him since his awakening. I felt I knew what was coming, and grief had hardened my heart. 

I discovered he had finished eating, and was watching me. 

"I don't think you ever told me your name," he said. 

"It's Diane," I said. 

"Diane. Yes, um, well I suppose you must be awfully puzzled. I'm still the Doctor, you know." 

"Yes, I know." 

He stared at me for a minute. "You're not going to ask me anything, are you?" he said suddenly. 

"No." 

He laughed. "The one situation I'm not prepared to handle." Suddenly I felt better. I smiled. 

"Alright," I said. "How about one question. Was there someone else in my room with you?" 

He looked at me keenly. "Yes, there was. The Master. Did he see you?" 

I shook my head. The Doctor looked relieved. He got up and walked over to a mirror on the wall, studying his reflection. Not for the first time. 

"You know," he said softly, "death at his hands I could almost accept. But this..." 

 

We walked down the beach to the blue box, the TARDIS. It was going to get dark soon. 

"Now if only I hadn't lost..." he began. 

I pulled the silver chain out of my pocket and handed it to him. "I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you, but I found this on the beach this morning when I went for a walk." 

He accepted it from me, and looked at me for a minute before shaking his head. 

"I don't suppose you'd like to take a little jaunt with me, would you?" he invited with a beautiful, enticing smile. I took a deep breath. 

"No thank you, Doctor," I said. 

He looked surprised, and a little disappointed. "But why?"

"I have reasons. I can't just go off and leave everything here," I lied. Then I smiled at him, almost the hardest thing I've ever done. "It has truly been a unique pleasure, meeting you. Send me a postcard," I attempted a joke. He looked at me thoughtfully. 

"Hmmm." he said. "Yes, I think I'll do that. Take care, Diane." 

"Goodbye, Doctor," I said. 

He surprised me with a hug, and then stepped into the TARDIS. I heard the strange wheezing groaning sound, and the blue box vanished. 

 

It took me a long time to walk home, and it was well after dark. The house was so quiet. 

I turned on the lights and sat down at the typewriter trying to write down everything about the past two days that I could remember. Finally I sat back, mind exhausted, if not at peace. 

Then I noticed a grandfather clock in the corner of the room that had never been there before. 

 

#

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first published in 1981 in a paper fanzine named The Gallifreyan Dispatches, created by a Doctor Who fan group in Houston, Texas, The Gallifreyan Consulate. Prior to the Interwebs, that is how we exchanged fanfic, children. 
> 
> "My" Doctor was the Fourth, and most particularly, the years prior to the Key to Time series, though I've seen all seven season episodes at least once. The series was sporadically broadcast on the local PBS, but we mostly exchanged fan tapes, in some cases bootlegs recorded in Britain, converted from PAL to NTSC and duped, then mailed around the country. 
> 
> During that period, The Master was a different character than the recent series have made him. The "new" Master is almost a petulant (if manic) child beside the dark menace of the Anthony Ainley period and before. I mean no disrespect to fans of the current Master, but it was such a different portrayal, and a dark and deeply menacing vibe. The older Master could never have been such a victim of the Time Lords, he was evil by choice, a nemesis indeed.
> 
> I was very interested in the recent close of the Eleventh Doctor's run and pleased that they did address the twelve regenerations limitation.
> 
> This story addresses it as well. You don't need to imagine Tom Baker here, though if you know his voice it might echo in some of the dialog. But this was written long, long ago, in the environment of a fandom that was infinitely smaller, perhaps more insular, and surprisingly... prudish.
> 
> I actually got into a little bit of trouble for this. I doubt it would scandalize anyone now. But in honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary, and because I found it again, here is the first of three fanworks I wrote more than two decades go.


End file.
